Appreciation
by whipplefilter
Summary: Everything Lightning knows about the world, he learned from Harv. He owes him a lot. But Harv just says, "Remember kiddo - anyone you work with, you're the one doing them the favor. Hell, you're eyes're saying thank you right now. [Unrepeatable] stop that [unrepeatable], it's [unrepeatable]. I don't need your thanks, just your contract."


Lightning is a few weeks old. He knows the sun, the thick green feel of East Texas air, and the clamor of tornado warnings. That's what's going off when the door to Harv's office peels up, drowning out most of Harv's greeting - except for the part he shouts up at the sky, the words of which are unrepeatable.

Harv sizes him up, hungry at first then Texas warm, like he recognizes what he sees. He says, "So, you gotta be that McQueen guy who keeps calling me. You got the touch, kid - let Harv show you how to work it."

Harv's the kind of guy who knows exactly what he's doing, and it opens doors. He walks into a restaurant for a banquet's-worth of B-panel sponsors and walks out with a list of willing backers longer than Lightning's body. He teaches Lightning how to smile, how to sizzle, and when Lightning gets his first shot at a press interview, it's Harv who's at the back of the room, blowing a kiss with his tire. And it's Harv, afterwards, who tells Lightning, "Kiddo, you got the knack. You can't train that mouth of yours. [Unrepeatable] gold, my man. [Unrepeatable] gold."

It turns out you can't train any part of Lightning, because the magic of his body through space is like nothing anyone's ever seen. Which is mostly true but also a lot Harv, who feeds the press, the Web, the radio all manner of carefully-crafted impressions, highlights, insider scoops on rookie sensation Lightning McQueen. ("Who's gonna call you a sensation?" asks Harv, at a rapid clip. "Exactly, he says - [unrepeatable] no one. The world is full of selfish jealous [unrepeatable], kid. You gotta do that work yourself. You wanna be a legend, you gotta call your own shot.")

"Don't let anyone think you owe 'em anything," Harv tells him. "You wanna have value, you gotta know how to throw it around.

"All the rest of the cars in the world - these schmucks start dropping value the moment they roll off that lot. This came you're in? You're swimming upstream. You gotta take this name - " the adhesive is warm and tacky as a forklift slaps Lightning's signature along the side of his roof - "and you gotta print [unrepeatable] money with it. So what's your bit, huh? We got five top-tenners in a row here and you gotta capitalize on that or it's not [unrepeatable] worth anything. What's your bit?"

Harv's good at his job (he says, the [unrepeatable] best). And as far as Lightning's concerned, Lightning is [unrepeatable] better. They're good for each other. Harv says, "Remember kiddo - anyone you work with, you're the one doing them the favor. Hell, you're eyes're saying thank you right now. [Unrepeatable] stop that [unrepeatable], it's [unrepeatable]. I'm a generous guy, McQueen, I don't need your [unrepeatable] thanks, so you better not give it to me.

"All the thanks I need is this - " he jostles Lightning's body - "on the track, and your name in triplicate. We got a contract, and that goes deeper than make or model. That's family, written in blood."

You're family, says Harv, when he's the only car who ever calls. When he issues dinner invitations - just, you know, chummy get-togethers, says Harv, though when Lightning arrives Harv's always stumbled across a few old friends who happen to also be dining tonight, and happen to have deep pockets.

It's a long time before anyone looks at Lightning with as much interest and as much history as Harv does. (Though Harv just says, "Don't [unrepeatable] start on with with that history [unrepeatable]. Old news ain't money news - and money news's the only kind that's gonna get you where you gotta go. All those cars out there screaming your name," says Harv. "That's not family. That's your product. No product, no value!"

* * *

Lightning knows his value. He gets it from Harv in a quarterly report.

But even if he didn't, look at him. He's [unrepeatable] Lightning McQueen. (Harv's phrase.)

But Luigi's is the first time in his life Lightning has ever bought tires. He didn't know tires were things anyone had to buy. All his life, they've just existed - and more often than not, Lightning's made his money by rejecting them. He pays Ramone for the paint and Fillmore for the fuel and he ends up with surplus and curios. He gives them a road, he gives them neon. This is the kind of value he understands.

At the end of the day it's all pittances - who can live for a year on the wealth of three bumper stickers, five tires, and some binoculars? - but it feels good, it feels bigger. It feels different.

Mater calls him his best friend. Ramone makes art. And Sally's in love with a vista full of rocks that no one can own and therefore cannot have any value at all.

"Thank you," says Sally. "Thanks for everything."

It's a cardinal sin, saying something like that willy-nilly. (According to Harv, thanks are acceptable, but only if you know what you're doing. There's a pecking order, and sometimes you gotta kow-tow. But if there's a pecking order here, Lightning's pretty sure Sally established Day 1 she wasn't at the bottom of it.) Lightning's not sure how to respond.

It's just a road, he says.

"No," says Sally. "It was much more than that."

It was more. There _is_ more.

It's such a simple thing - that idea. It makes so much sense, gives what he's feeling a name and a home. It's like there hadn't been room for it before. But you know, one day someone shows you a valley that stretches out forever and it's just rocks but it's not just rocks and she shows you old buildings but they're not old buildings - because she's showing you the world, she's showing you herself, and she is more.

And maybe that's what he's always been racing to find. Maybe he's found it.

Is _he_ more, too?

Then Sally says, "You should go," and the honeymoon is over. She turns him away and Harv says, _You're a big shining star. You're a superstar. You don't belong there anyway_ and everything happens so fast Lightning's not sure any more if the things they're telling him are the same, or different.

He watches the rocks whip by as Mack takes him west, the world - Sally's world - dressed down to nothing in the dark.

But - he starts. But he hasn't, he doesn't. But, something.

Now he's confused.

At the I-40/I-15 interchange, almost exactly, Lightning turns one year old, and feels no wiser than the day he was made.

When the sun rises, the redrock of Ornament Valley is Sierra brown, and the desert air has long been beaten away by Mack's air conditioning. Radiator Springs is old news, and everyone knows what old news ain't. Everyone.

 _Focus._

But when Lightning closes his eyes, it's not the future he sees.


End file.
